Monday, September 17, 2012

Lost in the Funhouse

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi last week was not premeditated, directly contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.

“Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo,” Rice told me this morning on “This Week.”

“In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated,” Rice said, referring to protests in Egypt Tuesday over a film that depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud. Protesters in Cairo breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy, tearing apart an American flag.

“We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo,” Rice said. “And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons… And it then evolved from there.”

Do you believe that people just spontaneously decide to fire rocket-propelled grenades at a consulate? Ah, those Libyans, always living for the moment. Or do you believe this dispatch?

Three days before the deadly assault on the United States consulate in Libya, a local security official says he met with American diplomats in the city and warned them about deteriorating security.

Jamal Mabrouk, a member of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander had a meeting about the economy and security.

He said they told the diplomats that the security situation wasn't good for international business.

"The situation is frightening, it scares us," Mabrouk said they told the U.S. officials. He did not say how they responded.

Blogger Sean Medlock, who blogs under the name "Jim Treacher" at the Daily Caller, has had a long ordeal trying to recover from being hit by a State Department vehicle while crossing the street in Washington, DC. He's been trying to get answers from the State Department for two years now. His conclusion about what happened in Libya, I think, is closer to the mark:

God rest your soul, Christopher Stevens. You tried to make the world a better place, the people you trusted let you down, and now they care about nothing but saving their own asses. You deserved better.

We all do.

There's a lot more about what Medlock has gone through at the link and it's worth your time.